The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

by Vandermeer, Jeff

  “I gave it one last shake,” he writes, “listened to the rattle of the teeth through that upturned speaking trumpet, and nothing else.”

  A year and three months after his visit from Thomas—during one of his periodic clear-outs of artefacts for which he no longer had space, or in which he no longer had interest, or which were “not working”—the professor is believed to have given what we later came to know as the Pulvadmonitor to the Dental Museum; on the grounds, presumably, that what it appeared to be designed to showcase, if for reasons beyond him, were the disaggregated dentures. In the museum itself, sterling detective work has uncovered an acquisition note for what is recorded simply as “Item,” on which note is an irate scribbled exchange in two hands: “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” “Bung it in the bloody attic.”

  Where, undisturbed, it did not so much languish as prepare itself for its second birth, for more than thirty years.

  beyond any fog

  in which copyright has been asserted

  is where the geese live

  —UNKNOWN, “ODE TO EVERYTHING”

  3. The Internatal Decades

  Lambshead quickly ascertained, after the second birth of what was later named Pulvadmonitor, that it was too fragile to be moved. It remained, and remains, in the attic of the Dental Museum. It was simple, with the resources and unorthodox measuring equipment to which Lambshead had access, to ascertain that, contrary to the assumption made by all other observers in the team, no long-mummified head had been placed within the container to be minutely animated by current from the battery. There was no residue of any matter transference. The head was not a speaker of, or for, the dead.

  The realisation came, at last, according to the simpler exigency of placing a hand over the mouth of the trumpet, and observing the start of a slow collapse and agitation in the face within, that rather than a speaking tube leading out, it was a funnel drawing in.

  A little super-gentle unscrewing of the outer rim, and Lambshead uncovered a filter like a finely holed sieve, clogged by now with three decades of hairs and larger airborne particles. This he cleaned and replaced. There was another, finer-grained filter further down the tube. The inside of the bell jar was under constant negative pressure. Air emerged from the grille at its base, but it was sucked in fractionally quicker through the trumpet, and from it was removed in stages the larger scobs of airborne debris, so that what it deposited at last within the long-undisturbed glass was a constant, extraordinarily slow, stream of London dust.

  And it was from thirty-plus years of that dust that the head within had slowly self-organised. Around the palate and fake gums and teeth from which it could make a mouth.

  “She did it,” Lambshead was to write. “My poor lost friend Serkis. She found a means to give the dust a voice.”

  neither lens nor cheque can clear for you

  nor shall this cat and nor shall these beaked bones intervene

  —UNKNOWN, “ODE TO EVERYTHING”

  4. The Dust’s Warning

  With this realisation, it became doubly imperative that the object not be moved, the battery not turned off (not that any researcher knew what combination of dials and switches might perform that action, nor how it had been left in an “on” position initially). The tiny chatterings and whisperings of the head were already enough to strain the integrity of the desiccated coagulum, held together by air pressure and the willpower of dust clearly desperate to communicate a message.

  If the mouth opens—for it opens still now—more than the tiniest crack, the lines of the face go deep, and a little avalanche of mouse-back-coloured substance spills away. Its shape is constantly replenished by the slow intake from the funnel, and so long as the losses occasioned by such linguistic exigencies are in balance with that new matter, the head can sustain itself. A sudden movement, a loss of power, and the face-slide would be catastrophic.

  Anyone who wishes to study or learn from the Pulvadmonitor must scooch uncomfortably down on the attic floor, to its eye level, more or less, making their notes in the dim illumination of field lights (more permanent alterations to the room to accommodate a better display would cause vibrations that might destroy the emissary).

  Almost all our questions remain unanswered. Why does the dust not open its eyes? What nature of eyes exist, indeed, if any, below those powder lids? Was it some sense of propriety that led the dust to construct the top of a collar, as if it was the bust only of a full person? As if, having decided to mimic our shape to make the transmission of information easier, in consideration for our psychology, there was no point in doing less than a thorough job. And, on the other side, what uncanny intuition for transubstantial courtesy was it that led Xanthe Serkis to place teeth ready for the soft-palateless dust, that it had grown around and constructed its dust-lips around, to ease its shaping of our words?

  Of course, the main question has always been, what is the dust’s warning?

  no

  no no no

  o really?

  yes no

  —UNKNOWN, “ODE TO EVERYTHING”

  5. The Tragedy of Design

  There can be no doubting the urgency of whatever message it is the dust wishes to convey. Whenever footprints, be they ever so careful, cross the floor towards it, it appears to become aware that it has watchers. Its mouth moves as quickly as it dares, it speaks as eagerly as its substance allows, its teeth, those little ceramic flashes in otherwise quite matt, quite indistinguishable dun skin, chatter like a telegraph operator. It wants to tell us something.

  The funnel is just in front of its lips, so tantalisingly like the speaking tube we know it is not. It might even operate like one, amplifying its breathless voice enough for us to hear, but that the soft current of air from out to in effaces whatever minutely whispered phrases the head might speak. Its voice is so faint that not even stethoscopes on the glass can help. It is simply inaudible. Only the click of those teeth can be heard, and if they tap in code, it is not one amenable to our codebreakers.

  Of course, lip-readers of countless languages have been brought to watch the head, to decipher its words. What is most frustrating of all to dust-watchers is not that none of them can discern any meaning but rather that they often see a few phrases, always disputed, never quite clear.

  Two English-speaking lip-readers have claimed the dust said this dog will never be your friend amid a stream of meaningless syllables. An Italianophone claimed that it told her three times to cross the bridge. It is too late for the light has been seen spoken in four languages. In 2002, a Hindi reader and a Finnish one both claimed to have read the lips at the same moment, the first seeing stop up all these gaps before it comes, the latter consider where your own bones go.

  Opinion is divided as to how to proceed. Lambshead was a pessimist on this issue. “As Lichtenberg said of angels,” he wrote in one of his last letters, “so I say of dust. If they, or it, ever could speak to us, why in God’s name should we understand?”

  Two things remain unclear, and intemperately debated. One is the origin of the quiet Egyptian heads that watch the Pulvadmonitor, the Dust’s Warning, approvingly. They were not a gift from Lambshead. No one knows their provenance, and there is no record of their arrival.

  The second concerns the “Violent Philosophy of the Archive.” This essay, in which is the footnote where first is mentioned the Dust’s Warning, and which hints at the importance of its (second) birth, was found in a sheaf of Lambshead’s papers dating from the mid-1980s and published posthumously. What is controversial is precisely when it was written. Textual evidence suggests that while it might have been just after, it could very well have been just before, the nook in the museum attic was uncovered. The question is whether, in other words, Lambshead was musing on something recently discovered; or was waiting impatiently for something that he had prepared to be found again.

  The dust doubtless knows the answer, and its agitated efforts notwithstanding, can tell us, and warn us of, nothing.<
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  The Miéville Anomalies

  The Miéville Anomalies

  The following art from China Miéville and accompanying descriptions by writer Helen Oyeyemi and “philosopher prince” Reza Negarestani first came to our attention by an exceedingly circuitous route that started with an anonymous e-mail that linked to a long article on Lambshead’s “secret past” published by an Athens newspaper. A week later, a letter with a Malaysian postmark arrived from someone named only “Incognitum,” who claimed to belong to a secret radical society devoted to change “through extreme re-contextualization and cross-pollination.” The envelope contained a key to decode the article. Two weeks after that development, the editors of this volume had an unpleasant encounter with a masked stranger who shadowed the house for two weeks before leaving a rather less encrypted message on the garage door.

  Decoding the article revealed the text for “The Very Shoe” and “The Gallows-horse.” Photographs of the crudely related pictographs on the garage door with the initials “CM” scrawled beside them were sent to the agent of China Miéville, whose sole response was to provide the two images reproduced herein. Failed attempts were made to telephone both Helen Oyeyemi and the Philosopher Army or “Shield Wall” dedicated to preventing Reza Negarestani from being contaminated by the world.

  Although these inquiries yielded no direct results, we subsequently received permissions to reprint from the same Malaysian address, which a Google Earth search revealed to be an empty lot in Kuala Lumpur. Thus, while we present this material as “in the spirit” of the cabinet, we cannot verify that Dr. Lambshead ever possessed such a shoe, or such a gallows-horse. As of this writing, there seem few options for obtaining further information. (It was a condition of Miéville’s participation in this compilation “and any future project that you may wish to pursue with him until either his demise or your own,” per telephone conversations with his designated “metamorphosis attaché,” that we not question him further on the subject.)

  The Very Shoe

  As Told to and Compiled by Helen Oyeyemi

  Created: circa 1940–1941

  Creator: Radim Kasparek (1901–1971) of Bohumil, Moravia

  Materials: Silk and canvas, with leather uppers, glass strip (3 cm), pinewood heel. Antenna: galvanized steel. Inner compartment (low-grade balsa wood, cotton lining) and accompanying window (low-grade balsa wood, 10 denier nylon) at the front of the outer sole added at a later date by person/s unknown

  Property of: Petra Neumann née Tichy (1970–), legal owner of shoe as per inheritance. Lambshead’s diary notes that “the most curious shoe” arrived in the first post on September 28, 1995, in a box postmarked Lausanne, accompanied by a note dated “October 1990”: “I trust you, Lambshead—inasmuch as I can be bothered to trust anybody. We are forbidden to bring material possessions to the monastery, so I leave this in your hands. Its value is beyond measure to me. It is my great-aunt’s shoe—the other one is lost, but the story in the family is that when Ludmila first saw the pair she was absolutely thrilled, clasped her hands together, and said in her best English: ‘They’re just too very very!’ So I call it ‘the Very Shoe.’ This thing is a witness, my friend. It stands by and it does not change its story. Extend the antenna and listen. Then tell me: am I mad, or are there still miracles in the world?” It can be seen that the doctor underlined the words “the monastery” and surrounded them with red exclamation marks, and indeed, the location and affiliation of this “monastery” Neumann mentions is unknown; subsequently, so are Neumann’s current whereabouts. The only other extant note from Neumann to Lambshead mentioning this institution is found among his papers—Neumann describes “the monastery” as “a place you go to learn conversation with stones, to find out what it is stones know.”

  Accession number: L1990.43

  The story of this shoe is quite a plain one, I’m afraid—the shoe has no ethnographic significance, nor does it have anything as exciting as a curse or a long-standing feud associated with it. It was made by a man who was not exactly poor, but close enough. He was awkward-looking, and he stammered because he was shy, and he always said the wrong thing to women, so they didn’t like him. He believed that he was born to loneliness. He ended up alone, so maybe he was. There was a William Blake poem that he muttered to himself as he worked, joining soles and heels:

  Man was made for joy and woe;

  And when this we rightly know

  Through the world we safely go . . .

  (there’s more but it is a long poem)

  . . . Every night and every morn

  Some to misery are born.

  Every morn and every night

  Some are born to sweet delight.

  Some are born to sweet delight,

  Some are born to endless night.

  And yet, and yet, Radim got a wife. A woman of elegance, a dancer. Ludmila. She had dainty, beautiful feet, with the highest and most pliant arches Radim had ever seen. The glass panel on the side of the shoe is titillation, designed to show a mere hint of a beautiful curve. Ludmila was of the Romani. One day, some soldiers and some doctors came to Bohumil, and they separated the Romani men from the Romani women, and made inspections of their health. The soldiers and the doctors found Ludmila even though she lived in a house with Radim—vigilant neighbours informed them that some of the Romani lived in houses now, so they knocked on doors. Ludmila’s health was excellent, and the following week she was sent a letter, ordering her to settle her affairs before a certain date, twenty-eight days away. Then, on the date given, she must go to a camp at Lety and serve as a labourer. Radim began to make plans for the two of them to run away together, but Ludmila would not run. Radim applied to go to the labour camp with her, but his application was refused. So he made her a pair of shoes, because he didn’t know what else to do. Ludmila danced for him the night before she went to the camp, and he was afraid that he’d made the heel too high. The next afternoon, Radim’s younger brother, Artur, went around to Radim’s shop to see how he was holding up after Ludmila’s departure. Radim told him about the dancing: “At one point she was simply spinning, round and round. And so fast, her face was a blur. It looked dangerous. And she said—I can’t stop! Catch me! And I did. But what about when she’s over there? What if—”

  (What if she can’t stop? It was silly to ask such a question. That would be the least of her worries; even a fool could see that.)

  Years later, Radim and Artur Kasparek went to that camp at Lety, where many, many Czech Romani were sent—the brothers went down on their knees amongst others who were also on their knees, and they searched a great hill of shoes, listening to cries of grief and cries of dismay: “They all look the same. . . .”

  When they found this shoe, the brothers knew that Ludmila had died at Lety. They would not have to go to Auschwitz, where some five hundred of the labourers had been sent, and search the shoes there. Radim and Artur puzzled over the addition of the window to the structure of the shoe; then, with a finger, Radim pierced the scraps of stocking that hung over the window and brushed gnawed bits of newspaper out of the compartment, newspaper and breadcrumbs and little bits of crumbled sugar. A mouse had been nesting in there. A pet—Ludmila had had a pet, at least. Radim looked for the second shoe. He looked and looked, but he couldn’t find it. Night came, and he and Artur slept beside the pile, woke at dawn and kept searching, but by the end of the second day, they knew the other shoe was gone.

  (For validation purposes, I should perhaps say something about who I am, and how I have come by this information. I am Antonin Neumann, Petra Neumann’s husband. The first time I took her to dinner, she told me she could never love anyone who ate their soup the way I did. I didn’t see anything wrong with the way I ate my soup, but I tried to change it. She laughed, and repeated herself. It demoralized me. I was reduced to asking for a very simple thing: her friendship, her respect. Then she made a U-turn and said she didn’t care either way, but we could get married if I liked.

 
I am a jeweller by trade, and I can say, without overstating my situation in any respect, that I am a rich man. Still, I have not known happiness for many years. Petra went off on her wild-goose chase without doing me the courtesy of announcing her plans, and I haven’t heard from her since. Talking to stones . . .

  I suppose I could fall in love with someone else, or, at the very least, distract myself with some other love, but I don’t want to. I’ve been tracing Petra’s family tree instead. With money, you can buy whole lives; you have only to wait until they have been lived. I’ve been reading diaries, reading letters of the most trivial kind, travelling, looking into the faces of her forebears and finding her there. I don’t think I’ll show her anger when she returns: my time has not been wasted. Somehow we’ve grown closer, much closer than we could have grown if she had been sat by my side all these years, much closer than most lovers ever get. Needless to say, I’m grateful to have been asked to produce the notes on this item.)